Persona 6 has yet to rear its head, despite seeming inevitable, given how the franchise keeps on growing. As if the success of Persona 5 wasn't enough, ports of the past games broaden the IP's reach and give new fans plenty to enjoy. All this hype seems like the perfect leadup to a Persona 6 reveal, but instead, Atlus and Perfect World have revealed Persona 5: The Phantom X, a mobile spinoff seemingly exclusive to China. In Persona 5: The Phantom X, players will encounter the Phantom Thieves once again while controlling a new protagonist, which makes it feel like a possible test run for Persona 6's structure.
Due to the remarkable achievements of Persona 5, there's cause to wonder if Atlus wants to stick with the Phantom Thieves brand indefinitely. Joker and his team are certainly good for marketing, given how popular they are, but the franchise will remain freshest if it regularly introduces new Persona users with their own stories. Atlus could strike a compromise by making all future games revolve around the Persona 5 canon, occasionally featuring the Phantom Thieves and preserving the picaresque aesthetic while focusing on new teams. It'd be a surprising direction for the IP, but it doesn't seem out of the question.
Persona 6 Could Be Its Own Persona 5 Spinoff
Persona 5: The Phantom X has the makings of a mainline Persona game -- a brand-new team of characters with unique Personas and backstories -- but it's still a part of the Persona 5 universe, as promotional material shows. At this point, it isn't clear how involved the Phantom Thieves will be in Phantom X's story, but whatever the answer is, the game reeks of an experiment. A mobile spinoff is a safe way for Atlus to search for the right balance of new characters and Persona 5 nostalgia, since it's not central to the canon and can be a smaller investment overall.
If players seem to like P5X's integration of P5's characters and lore, then the latter game could become the new centerpiece of the franchise's entire universe. Although they belong to the same world, each Persona game usually brings its new incarnation of the Shadow world, but maybe Atlus wants to introduce a little stability to the franchise. That'd certainly have its benefits; it could free up Atlus to focus on characters and real-world storytelling over new lore systems. Persona 6 could further the character arcs of Persona 5's beloved characters too.
While letting the Phantom Thieves live on would be exciting, it'd be a risky choice. Persona 6 shouldn't lean too much on Persona 5's characteristics and lore, or it could fail to stand out as the next evolution of the franchise. Part of the magic of Persona lies in how Atlus keeps managing to tell completely fresh stories, introduce memorable settings, and shift between themes and aesthetics while keeping tons of mechanical franchise conventions in place. Locking Persona into the P5 design could make the franchise stagnate. Spinoffs looking at the Phantom Thieves from new angles are welcome, but Persona 6 needs its own identity.
All in all, it's relatively unlikely that Atlus will decide to make Persona 6 a part of the Persona 5 suite, but Persona 5: The Phantom X sends an interesting message anyhow. Persona spinoffs don't usually introduce a completely new team that has some kind of relationship with a mainline team. At the very least, Phantom X could suggest that Atlus wants to tighten the network of connections between the groups of Persona users. The likes of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax and Persona Q already form some ties between the main characters, but maybe Atlus plans to establish a much larger system of secondary teams orbiting around the protagonists from the mainline games. If that happens, then Persona 6 might have a particularly large pool of references and cameos to draw from.
Persona 5: The Phantom X is in development for mobile devices.